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Updated: May 4, 2025
In A.D. 135 it was captured by a Roman force after a siege of three and a half years. Ramleh, a point twelve miles from Jaffa, was once occupied by Napoleon. Lydda, supposed to be the Lod of Ezra 2:33, was passed. Here Peter healed Aeneas, who had been palsied eight years. Jaffa is the Joppa of the Bible, and has a good deal of interesting history.
Every spot, every building became invested with a double interest. "Perchance," I thought, "I may be lingering within the very house where Jesus once sojourned." More than satisfied with my excursion, I returned to our bark. By three o'clock in the afternoon we were close under the walls of Joppa. To enter this harbour, partially choked up as it is with sand, is described as a difficult feat.
Richard fought one terrible battle at Joppa with the Saracens, and then he tried to go on to take Jerusalem; but he wanted to leave a good strong castle behind him at Ascalon, and set all his men to work to build it up. When they grumbled, he worked with them, and asked the duke to do the same; but Leopold said gruffly that he was not a carpenter or a mason.
But unknown to itself, Joppa nursed one apostate in its midst, one unavowed but benighted little heretic, who so far from sharing these sentiments and offering up nightly thanksgiving that despite her great unworthiness she had been suffered to be born in Joppa, made it one of her most fervent and reiterated petitions that she might not always have to live there; that some time, if she were very good and very patient, it might be granted her to go.
There certainly was much to say in favor of Joppa. In the first place, it was remarkably salubrious. Its inhabitants died only of old age, seldom even of that, or of diseases contracted wholly in other localities.
Bethany, a considerable town near by, was built to be its shopping emporium; Galilee, a little farther off, to accommodate its art needs; Morocco, a more considerable town still farther off, to be the birthplace of those ancestors who were so unfortunate as to come into the world before there was any Joppa to be born in.
They went in bodies, in numbers from a handful from some remote but pious hamlet to great armies from the leveled cities of Joppa, Ptolemais and Anthedon, from Cæsarea and Tyre and Sidon, from the enthusiastic towns in Galilee, and even from far-off Antioch and Ephesus.
It was situated in a westward direction from the temple, and near Mount Moriah. It was on the direct road from Jerusalem to Joppa, and is thus the very spot where a weary brother, travelling on that road, would find it convenient to sit down to rest and refresh himself. It was outside the gate of the temple.
If God had no use for him in the East, here was work to do in the West. But had He none? What of Joppa, shuddering under the sword? What of Acre, where the French army wallowed in sloth, with two queens at its mercy and Saint-Pol in the mercy-seat? What, indeed, of Jehane? Nobody breathed her name; yet night and day the image of her floated, half-hid in scarlet clouds, before King Richard.
For Julian Augustus with his whole army died there for thirst, as they say. We have already, said they, given order for that. In the Syriac sea you have nine thousand and fourteen great ships laden with the best wines in the world. They arrived at Port Joppa.
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